Wednesday, December 31, 2014

There wasn't really a game I thought was deserving of being called the best game of the year until december month, when I finally played Transistor. Oh, my, Transistor. Oh my. Well, to be fair, I did miss out on a lot of games this year which I wanted to play. In fact, I believe that if I were to have made a prediction at the beginning of the year as to what games would make it to my top ten, I think a lot of them would have consisted of games I've barely touched upon. The Witness would be there for sure (which didn't see the light of day 2014 - better luck next year Jon, I'm sure we'll be BLOWn away!) The Vanishing of Ethan Carter seemed very promising too, although I don't think I actually knew about the game a year ago, and decided on playing it when it hits the PS4 with a friend instead of playing it with low fidelity on my pc. Then there's the Dreamfalls, The Wolves Among Us, the Walking Deads, the Kentucky Route Zeros - episodals which I haven't played because I'd rather do them all in one go when they're a wrap. Both The Longest Journey and The Dream Machine have taken many years to finish, and I've decided that waiting is better than playing a bit here and there.

Dragon Age Inquisition is another game that would have made the top ten prediction, although by now I've accepted that I won't be playing that type of game much more anyway - sad but true. I'm opting out of the 50hour+ games, and going for stuff such as Consortium and Unrest for my rpg fixes. Shadowrun too, for next year. Well, sure, I'll be playing Pathologic and the new Planescape game, which will both be very long games, but mainly I'm just opting out of games which have a lot of filler and to me meaningless violence/gameplay. Perhaps it's no coincidence that two of this years biggest disappointments for me have been The Banner Saga and Wasteland 2 - both oldschool computer RPGs which I helped kickstart. The Banner Saga was simply too epic for me, too abstract, with too little emotion. It has the same problem as had the "Choice of" games, which seemed very interesting to begin with (interactive novels which lots of choices, yey!) but then got me not caring at all about the characters and my motives. Wasteland 2 on the other hand... well, I did play 40+ hours of it, almost finished it actually. But it just wasn't worth it. I know I love those types of games and just using them as escapism, but it wasn't a memorable experience in the end. It gets an honorable mention, basically.

Perhaps I should be skeptic when it comes to my hopes for the old-school pc rpgs that are coming in 2015, but I can't help myself. Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera are two of the games I'm looking forward to the most next year. Then there's the aforementioned The Witness, thePS4 exclusive Everybodys Going to the Rapture, the X360 exclusive Ori and the Blind Forest and Quantum Break, the remakes Grim Fandango and Majoras Mask, the follow-up Metal Gear Solid 5, the question marks Sail Home, Outer Wilds, Gorogoa and Life is Strange, the kickstarter successes Pathologic (O_M_G!), Ice-Bound (by my favorite creator of interactive fiction, Aaron Reed), That Dragon Cancer, The Sun Also Rises, Epanalepsis, Moon Hunters, the kickstarter non-successes To Azimuth, The Black Glove (Bioshock without combat encounters), and Late to The Party (same guys that made Unrest).

So anyway, speaking of being late to parties, I gotta go. Here's the list of my favorite video games for this year.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

A theme ought to be omnipresent but subtle. If the audience can
identify the theme easily then it's too over-the-top. If there's
unanimous consensus about the theme then it's also over-the-top. A theme
is like the body language of the work. It should give a strong
impression to those paying close attention while operating on a
subconscious level in most cases.

Mass Effect lost its way. It could have been a series that really explored these notions of morality, humanity, artificial intelligence, and merging with technology. And it really does hit so many amazing character and story beats—while Mass Effect has the greatest sense of world-building, I fell most in love with the cast of Mass Effect 2. And I credit Mass Effect 3 for achieving a sense of epic scale, urgency, and drama. It delivers well on its “galaxy at war” premise, making you feel like you’re at the head of a massive operation to save life as we know it. It also has some of the most stunning cinematic production values I’ve ever seen in a video game—let’s just say I was not expecting what happened on Tuchanka.

But in the end, the glue that ties a story and its characters together is the writing and the themes, the stuffing between the lines and all that hums in the subtext. And that part of it was sadly fumbled, regardless of how much fun I was having with all the side stories and character vignettes. http://www.videogameheart.com/daily/shepard-among-the-machines/

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After four years of talking with all these versions of myself, the long-distance aspect of my relationship came to an end. My girlfriend and I moved in together. I don’t travel as much anymore—only on holidays to see the folks—and so I had no use for my passengers anymore. I didn’t need their voices or, at least, my awareness of their voices. I made an effort not to think about them.